


The Black '81 Ford Thunderbird

by cocoacremeandgays



Category: South Park
Genre: Anxiety, Cars, Craig's a total car nerd, Fluff, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-05
Updated: 2018-05-05
Packaged: 2019-05-02 10:16:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14542521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cocoacremeandgays/pseuds/cocoacremeandgays
Summary: It was the most beautiful thing Tweek had ever experienced.And it was so dangerously beautiful that it terrified him.





	The Black '81 Ford Thunderbird

**Author's Note:**

> I told myself I'd never post this thing but we all know I never listen to myself so eyyyy.  
> I wrote this legit in January sometime, so that's fun.  
> Did I mention it's massively unedited? Because it's massively unedited. I handed it to a few friends to read and they were all like, "dude, you should cut it down a bit" and obviously (me being me) I was like "lol nah".  
> So yeah. sorry friends.  
> I forgot about it and it sat in my docs for a few months and I just remembered it today and so. y'know. like a rational person, I decided to post it. bc that's the smart thing to do.  
> Anyway, I hope y'all who read it enjoy it.  
> ((thumbs up emoji))

There's a black '81 eighth gen Ford _Thunderbird_ in the garage, gathering dust and buried in cardboard boxes that haven't seen the light of day-- or even been touched-- in almost ten years. The _Thunderbird_ hasn't been driven since the day its rightful owner had graduated from high school. It was bought off a creep from Craigslist back in 2007, which had been an adventure, to say the least. The car itself looked nothing like the pictures posted on the page at the time. Hell, the ad was for a green '92 Jeep _Wrangler_. Obviously, Mr. Tucker was confused and enraged at the false advertising, and he threatened to call the police. Ironically, the only thing that saved the weirdo from certain issues with the law was Mr. Tucker's 12-year-old son, Craig.

Tweek, the blonde boy who accompanied Craig and his father to the viewing of the alleged '92 Jeep _Wrangler_ , really couldn't say that he was surprised when his usually-aloof best friend decided to flip off his dad and pat the '81 _Thunderbird_ square on its driver's door like it was a precious animal. He knew that Craig liked cars (really, _really_ liked cars), and while the _Thunderbird_ wasn't particularly his favorite, it was among the greats that he held in his heart. Frank Sinatra did appear within a '55 _Thunderbird_ in the movie _The Tender Trap_ , after all-- and didn't you know that the pitcher for the Detroit Tigers, Denny McLain, had his own '69 _Thunderbird_ Two Door Landau as a gift from the Ford Motor Company itself?

Craig was practically an encyclopedia of knowledge on all things car-related, and Tweek held no doubts about Craig being fully capable of driving any car put in front of him by the time he was nine years old. His best friend's eyes gained this magically intense look of wonderment whenever they watched _NASCAR_ together on television, and it came back at four o'clock pm when the cheesy _Red Racers_ music started playing. That's what Tweek remembers seeing that day as the three stood on the cracking driveway of some creep's property. He remembers watching Craig get this heavy-set look in his eyes, and the corners of his mouth started to twitch upwards into the beginnings of a beaming, glowing smile as he pressed his fingertips gingerly to the black paint of this '81 Ford _Thunderbird_. The yelling from Mr. Tucker had been making Tweek feel twitchy and irritated, but the look on Craig's face helped him push that all away.

Creepy Craigslist man got this grin on his face, too, but Tweek knew it was more just from the fact that he might be able to get this thing out of his driveway than it was because of any real, unadulterated joy. So his lips parted in this particularly grimy, wide-toothed grin and he said, “You like _Thunderbirds_ , kid?” and at first, no one said anything. The words hung in the air like Halloween decorations that were left a little too long and are now starting to droop in the heat of next summer, but it's nearing Halloween again, anyway, so why take them down? And the man opens his mouth, probably to say something about how great this one model of this one make of this one brand of this one car is, but Craig butts in too quickly.

Craig says, “Buddy, you don't know the half of it.” Just like that he's back to ignoring everyone and everything else going on around him, except for the _Thunderbird_ he's touching. And he keeps touching it, brushing his thumb over the metal handle and staring at his reflection in the smudged window. He's fully captured by this car that's rusting in some places on the bumpers, and he's not paying any attention to the truly terribly scratched paint on the driver's door, and he doesn't care about the dent on the outside of one of the wheel-well liners, because it's a _Thunderbird_ , dammit, and he wants it to be his _so bad_.

Mr. Tucker sees the look in his son's eyes, too. He can see the elation in his smile, and like the good father he is, he starts to give the car a once-over. Mr. Tucker isn't nearly as dismissive as Craig is with the flaws, though. He clicks his tongue, all disappointed-like again, and points accusingly at the front bumper. “We can't get it, Craig,” he says. “See it? It's rusting.”

“But I want it,” replies Craig, voice monotonous and nasal. He doesn't look at his dad when he talks. He doesn't whine. He just tells his dad what he wants and hopes for the best, and if it doesn't work-- well, if it doesn't work, at least he gets to brag to Clyde Donovan tomorrow at lunch about touching a _Thunderbird_ from 1981.

Tweek glances to Mr. Tucker and sees the look he has on his face, the intense contemplation he's holding somewhere deep within the back of his mind. The two make eye contact for a moment, a red-haired man who's been slowly balding for the past ten years, and a twelve-year-old boy with an unruly blonde mess atop his head that's about a year overdue for a haircut. It wasn't awkward, but at the same time, Tweek hadn't continued the eye contact for more than a second or two before looking away towards his feet, clad in dusty, untied sneakers and socks that didn't exactly match in length under his khaki pants (Craig always teased him for those, told him he looked like he worked in a department store). He kicked the worn soles of his shoes against the crumbling cement of the driveway, listened to the jagged edges of rocks catch on the jagged edges of the ground.

“What do you think, Tweek?” Craig asks.

He jolts his chin up from its down-turned position, and takes notice of the fact that Craig is staring at him expectantly. His caramel-colored fingertips are still idly caressing at the side of the _Thunderbird_ , though Tweek doesn't think Craig really notices that he's doing it, anymore. Adrenaline starts to rouse his fight, flight, or freeze response, and Tweek tics, his head jerking to the side, and he yelps in surprise at his racing, racing, racing mind. Distantly, he can pinpoint the issue with his brain's incessant monologue ( _why is he asking me, I don't know, what if I say something wrong, I'll never live it down, he'll never let me_ ). Tweek can feel the eyes of Mr. Tucker and the Craigslist creep and Craig all at the same time. The clock is ticking, he reminds himself, just say something already. He yelps again. “Gah-- I don't know, man, Jesus, that's too much pressure.”

Craig doesn't do much, but his face twitches up as he watches Tweek slowly unravel in the surprise of sudden socialization. “Dude. Calm down. I'm just asking you what you think about the car.”

“I don't know,” Tweek repeats, futzing with his fingers. “I mean, it's a cool car. It just doesn't make sense to buy a car that you want, even though you won't be the one driving it for a good... I dunno, three years?”

Craig's face sours. Tweek figuratively back-steps.

“What? It's true!” But saying that doesn't shift Craig's expression, and just as much, it doesn't change his mood. The boys stand there in silence among the men within the driveway, just for a moment, before Craig turns himself back towards the _Thunderbird_ underneath his fingers.

Tweek increases his fidgeting tenfold. He watches Craig look at the car a little forlorn, like his best friend was moving away right in front of his eyes, and this was their last goodbye. Tweek, at the time, really couldn't relate to the idea of loss quite yet. He was twelve, and so was Craig, and their brains hadn't matured enough to properly deal with the idea of losing something a little too animated in their imaginative minds. Craig's disappointment read on his face like an open children's book.

Mr. Tucker says, “Alright, alright. How much is it?”

And just like that, the disappointment was gone.

“Sixty,” says the creep.

Mr. Tucker tried to wrap his brain around the idea of a sixty thousand dollar car from Craigslist. “Sixty?” He sputtered, eyes wide and face reddening at the prospect. It's obvious for those around him that he's beginning to get angry again, reeling to begin another enraged tangent at this man. “Sixty _thousand_?”

Tweek hollers. The disappointed look on Craig's face, identical to the one earlier, comes back, and he presses his fingerprints deeper into the metal materials of the car. The tips of his teeth nibble on the chapped skin of his lips, creating little bleeding craters of raw, new skin. Similarly, Tweek begins to chew a constant rhythm into his right cheek, picking layer after layer of skin until it's rubbed red and raw, too. Tweek can almost hear the things swirling around in Craig's head. Sixty thousand was much more expensive than the five thousand the '92 _Wrangler_ was to be sold to them for. A '81 Ford _Thunderbird_ is worth approximately ten thousand dollars. Sixty thousand is ridiculous.

The creep from Craigslist acknowledges that he's tried to get away with too much, and changes his answer like it was an honest mistake.

“Sorry, did I say sixty?” His grin is back, toothed and cheeky. “I meant six.”

So they made the transaction, exchanged and traded and bought and sold and shook hands at the end of it. Mr. Tucker ended up buying the black '81 eighth gen Ford _Thunderbird_ for approximately $6,000 even, and at 2:16 pm, Mr. Tucker, Craig, and Tweek hopped into the new Tucker family car and drove it around the neighborhood for almost twenty minutes straight. Craig sat in the back with Tweek at first, but ended up riding shotgun for the last fifteen minutes, staring widely out the windshield, his hands pressed excitedly against the dashboard, feeling the vibrations of the car as they drove down the poorly-tended roads of a tiny neighborhood down in southern Colorado.

“You could have stood by me a little more back there,” Craig told Tweek at 2:41 pm, back in Mr. Tucker's utterly crappy '99 Chevrolet _Monte Carlo_. The AC didn't work, so the boys were really starting to feel the heat, sweating in mid-August humidity. It was typically cold down here in Colorado, but there were a few select days in late July and early August that were truly miserable. The 1971 song _Stairway to Heaven_ by Led Zeppelin was playing on the crackling radio station.

“You asked me what I thought about the car, not what I thought you thought about the car,” Tweek defended. He twisted the worn green material of his cotton button-up shirt in the palm of his hands, gripping his fingers into the folds and creases created from the pulling. He only stopped when one of the buttons threatened to pop open, which happened sometimes when the stress got to his head, and it caused him to pull his clothing a little too hard to reduce the pressure rising up in his chest.

“Whatever.”

This wasn't their first disagreement. The two of them had gone through plenty of arguments in the three years since their friendship started, and even some before they had become friends. They experienced their first fist fight, both in general and with each other, when they were nine years old. Craig still has a scar within one of the chapped creases of his bottom lip from where Tweek slipped him a heavy punch to the face. Craig had knocked one of Tweek's teeth out. Thankfully, it was only a baby tooth, and the adult tooth had long since grown in the empty place.

This tiny feud between them was a milestone simply because of the fact that it was the first one they had experienced while Craig's family owned the _Thunderbird_ , and it was only one of many firsts to come within the friendship of Tweek and Craig. Sunday, August 5th, 2007 marked the date of the first episode of _Red Racers_ the two boys watched together after the purchase of the _Thunderbird_ , and Craig also considers August 5th to be the car's birthday. Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007 marks Craig's thirteenth birthday, and also marks the first birthday he experienced while his family owned the _Thunderbird,_ while Friday, November 9th marks Tweek's.

Wednesday, October 31st, 2007 marked the first Halloween the boys experienced after the purchase of the _Thunderbird_ , and Thursday, November 22nd, 2007 marked the first Thanksgiving, and Tuesday, December 25th, 2007 marked the first Christmas, and January 1st, 2008 marked the first New Years day.

On Friday, February 6th, 2009, Craig made Tweek laugh so hard milk came out his nose, and it got all over the back of the front passenger's seat.

Craig took driver's-ed over the month of September, 2009, and the first ever car he drove was the '81 Ford _Thunderbird_ after acing his knowledge test on October 29 th, 2009.

On Saturday, October 23rd, 2010, Craig turned sixteen.

On Sunday, October 24th, 2010, the '81 eighth generation Ford _Thunderbird_ gained the official title of “Craig's First Car”, and he drove it around everywhere.

Sure, it had issues. The brakes had to be replaced, the air conditioning mysteriously ceased working in the middle of a long drive through the mountains of Colorado, and one of the back seats had a softball-sized chunk taken out of it from where his little sister decided it would be a fantastic idea to take a curling iron to the fabric. The paint was even more chipped than it had been back when they first bought it, and there was a ding in the passenger's side door from where someone backed way too fast out of a parking space and nicked it before they could hit the brakes. But even with everything that was wrong with the car, Craig was still in love with it just like he had been that sweltering day in the early August of 2007. His favorite thing to do ever since he got his license was go for a drive just for the hell of it after school. He'd pick Tweek up from the East entrance of their quaint little Coloradan town high school and they'd take off in some random direction and just drive.

Ten minutes into the fifteen minute drive, the heat of their bodies would start to warm the car up enough to be uncomfortable, and Craig would reach over to tug the window crank until the driver's side window was open halfway. The car would cruise down a road that headed straight through the center of South Park, until they exited on Highway 50, and they would keep driving until they found the area in the middle of nowhere with the mountainous natural rock and dirt walls growing up from either side of the road for easily twenty feet at its highest point. The area looks like the construction workers, or road builders, or whatever, had dug directly into the center of a mountain in the making, leaving the sides to rise like barriers on the left and the right.

Just before they reach the beginning of the steep incline of the hill, Craig will turn the wheel to the right just enough to roll the _Thunderbird_ into a steady place at the side of the road, and then the two boys will abandon their things in the car and make the fifteen minute trek up the right-side wall until they get to the peak, where they would sit down and talk and laugh and watch the cars and trucks roll by and listen to the sound of nature and pick at ants and beetles as they crawled up their pants and stuck them with their prickly little legs.

And maybe, if the two were feeling ambitious, they'd bring their backpacks with them up the crumbling hill, and work on homework together and treat it like a study session. It'd take them twice as long to finish one equation because of the distraction of the beauty of their perfectly imperfect little hometown, but they wouldn't mind because they're having fun up on that childish mountain playground. They may have been technically trespassing on private property, but they didn't care because the moment ruled over the consequences of their actions and they lived off of the natural high they got from just spending time at the peak of nature.

Tweek thinks that he first felt the warm, pounding pressure deep within his chest on the top of that hill by the side of Highway 50. It was this crushing feeling that squeezed and coddled his lungs like pillows in the softest bed, this pang of sentimentality and adrenaline and pure relaxation that he felt with his best friend. It was there, on that hill, their knees caked in blades of dry grass and cracked twigs moist with the cold, crumbling dirt, with the sun setting behind them and the sky turning a dusky red-gray, with a massive ivory semi-trailer truck speeding across the road below them.

It was Tuesday, May 10th, 2011, when an awkward, lanky blonde teenager realized he'd fallen for his best friend.

That feeling that built in his chest whenever they sat together in the grass and shrubbery so dry it could start a fire from rubbing wrong, that feeling of breathlessness and that itching, prickling, jittery, uncomfortable feeling he got whenever Craig brushed his hand accidentally past his knee, or whenever they shared a high-five or a fist-bump or a halfhearted “bro-hug”-- that craving to just reach over and hold his hand and never let go. The fire in his chest chafed to life by the dry and cracking wildlife that screamed at him to _protect_. Yeah. That feeling. It was the most beautiful thing Tweek had ever experienced.

And it was so dangerously beautiful that it terrified him.

So, it was there, among the bending nature and brush, with the sun's heat boring down on their backs from a dark, cloudless sky, that Tweek decided to keep it a secret. It was logical, in that moment, to push it away out of his eyes like a piece of his tangled hair and just enjoy the feelings he had. He'd let it lay like a cat in the shadows, and allow himself to experience the constricting pangs of caring for someone so deeply, and he endured the panic and the hurt and the pain of knowing he'd never get the chance to know what it felt like to have Craig love him back. Not like this.

Things went well for a while. There were no issues and the really debilitating pangs of sentimentality only hit occasionally, on top of that hill, staring at the cars rolling by, until they didn't, and suddenly, they happened everywhere. They hit him rough, hard, and fast, like a softball to the chest, and squeezed his lungs and his diaphragm until it hurt just to breathe around Craig. It built and built and built and built until it exploded and made a deep crater in his head that was slowly filling up with ideas and thoughts and feelings and burning wreckage.

It was midday on Tuesday, June 7th, 2011, when Tweek kissed Craig as they sat in the front seats of the '81 Ford _Thunderbird_.

It was the first day of their summer vacation, and Craig had just tugged the steering wheel to the right until the car was parked at the shoulder. The area was desolate. Highway 50 was completely abandoned at that point in time, most who usually drove down the road having been at work or spending the first day of their summer break at home, enjoying the freedom and carelessness of childhood memories of sneaking downstairs at six in the morning to watch the television while the rest of the house slept. That's what Tweek was planning on doing that day, at least, until Craig came knocking and told him to get in the car, they were going for a ride.

When the _Thunderbird_ finally came to park, the dry grass creaking and surely breaking under the weight of a vehicle, Tweek reached to the left to unfasten himself from his seat-belt and exit the car. He didn't get that far. His fingertips had hardly managed to brush against the heated plastic and metal mechanism of the seat-belt before Craig forced his hand in the small gap of empty space between the buckle and Tweek's hand, effectively pushing Tweek's fingers away from where they supposedly had to be. Confused and frustrated, Tweek's spine rolled with a flinch. His voice was exasperated and tense.

“What was that for?”

Craig didn't say anything, simply sitting in wait for something that Tweek wasn't able to figure out. Both of their brains worked and turned and clicked into places that didn't fully complete the thoughts and conclusions they were trying to come to. In that moment, the two made eye contact. They tried to test the theory that the eyes were windows to the soul, tried to estimate what the other was feeling and what they were thinking about each other.

Tweek could feel the hairs standing up on the nape of his neck and the backs of his arms, and he could suddenly very clearly feel the material of his shirt around his neck. It was more than loose enough for him to breathe, but his airways felt like they were constricting. He exhaled, lungs emptying whatever it is that human beings breathe out, and they sat there. And they sat there a little more. And a little more.

And finally, Craig said, “What's up with you.”

And Tweek's brain took that moment to wonder if it had always been that difficult to figure out if Craig was asking him a question or answering the question he had been asked, and it took that moment for him to mull repeatedly over the monotonous, flat, and utterly bored cadence that Craig always had no matter what. He wondered if he's always spoken in that nasal tone, and if he's always had the edgings of a lisp.

Tweek wonders if his eyes have always been that blue, and if his hair has always been that curly, and if his skin has always been that tan. His eyes feel full of an image that is unrecognizable and confusing, and he wonders, very briefly, if this is actually the first time he's ever really looked at Craig. Tweek sees Craig's Adams-apple bob as he swallows, and he begins to open his mouth, but Tweek interrupts.

“What do you mean?”

Craig's facial expression twitches in a minuscule, unrecognizable way. “When I ask 'what's up with you,' I typically mean 'what's up with you.' Like, 'dude, you're acting weird, why is that.' I thought it was pretty straightforward, but I guess I'll have to add that to my list of _'Apparently Roundabout Questions People Don't Understand.'_ ”

All the while Craig speaks, he remains utterly still. He uses no gestures, his expression doesn't change, and his eyes don't break from Tweek's. The blonde boy begins to believe his friend almost inhuman in his stillness, until the corners of his mouth twitch into a downwards-turned expression, and he lifts his hand away from the passenger's side seat-belt. Although free to move from here, Tweek doesn't.

“Look. I just don't get why you're being so distant. You don't have to tell me what's going on if you don't want to, I guess, but don't try to brush me off with the whole _'nothing's going on,'_ bullshit, because I know you well enough to understand something's up. So, what's up.”

Tweek is so on-edge that he can catch the almost microscopic shifts and adjustments within his friend's body language. Craig's eyes flick sideways to glance at the side mirror immediately to Tweek's right, and his shoulders lift whenever he brings the heavy, dust-ridden oxygen into his lungs. His foot stays firmly pressed against the brake, even though it really doesn't need to be there. The car is parked, it isn't going anywhere, and Tweek wants to say something about it, but he doesn't.

Tweek just keeps taking in the information through his eyes and his ears and his nose, and his tongue begins to burn with the distant taste of blood from where he's managed to bite a newly refreshed wound into his cheek. His incisors pull and tug at skin that's trying so hard to heal from being torn over, and over, and over again, but he's much too anxious to allow it to built itself up. A part of him believes that slowly mutilating the first few tissue-paper-thin layers of skin on the inside of his right cheek is much better than biting his lips until they crack and bleed and hurt. Another part of him believes it's better than pulling his hair out clump by clump, just trying to rip away the anxiety he feels so often that he's practically become numb to it by now. Another part of him believes it's better than accidentally ripping his shirts when he rolls and grips them, rough and strained, between his palms in embarrassment and panic. The rest of him knows that he believes those things just to make him feel better about transferring a habit rather than fully getting rid of it, like his dad told him to, like his therapist told him to try, like Craig tried to help him with.

And suddenly, his hands are working much faster than his brain and his body resumes in a distressingly unfamiliar autopilot. The next thing he knows, his fingers have hooked into the collar of Craig's deep blue tee-shirt, gripping hard enough to pull him across the center console and into an awkward lean into the passenger's seat. Tweek's ears are overwhelmed with the quiet sound of Craig mumbling a startled, “ _Oh_ ,” like he's realized something, like his brain is snapping in clicks of gears and turning cogs to an acknowledgment, like he finally _understands_ , and he does. Their mouths meet in an utterly ungraceful mesh of lips and teeth, skin and bone and flesh and messy, unbalanced, unpracticed fumbling. Tweek shakes like a rabbit the entire time, even though he's the one who started it, he's the one who caused it, he's the one to blame, and-- and, and oh, god, Craig won't forgive him for _this_.

Overwhelmed and frightened, Tweek loses his grip on Craig's collar and instead shifts his grip to his shoulders. He pulls backwards as he pushes his best friend away, and suddenly they're not touching anymore. They remain as separate beings in the black 1981 eighth generation Ford _Thunderbird_ , hearing their own breathing and breathing their own air.

For what seems like hours, yet in reality is only about thirty seconds, the two sit in silence among the possibility for interaction and response and the idea of talking to one another. Tweek focuses on his breathing, focuses on his heartbeat, focuses on chewing the skin of his cheek, focuses on going to his happy place, where there are all sorts of calming noises, and all sorts of colorful animals, and a perfect little stump for him to sit on rather than the worn-down passenger's seat of the _Thunderbird_.

But the thirty seconds pass, and then Tweek's left shoulder is overtaken by the feeling of warmth, the heat of another body. He sneaks a peak to his shoulder, notices that Craig has his right hand resting there. Tweek's right cheek begins to burn and itch and tingle when Craig places his left hand just across his jawline. Gingerly, softly, Craig lifts and turns Tweek's head to face him, to form another bond through eye contact. Slowly, so very slowly, he leans over the center console to press a kiss to Tweek's lips, sweet and meaningful.

Tweek kisses back.

 


End file.
